FinCEN defends anti-money laundering rule in Fidelity National lawsuit

Filed in May 2025, the lawsuit lists FinCEN and its director Andrea Gacki, as well as the Department of the Treasury and its secretary Scott Bessent, as defendants. In the lawsuit, FNF claims that the rule, which was promulgated under the Biden administration, is “arbitrary and capricious,” and that the rule will cause “irreparable harm.” 

The rule requires title firms to report specific details on all-cash home purchase transactions. These include the names, addresses, dates of birth, citizenship status and ID numbers of all people involved — including minors, payment details and information about trusts and entities that are purchasing the property.

Rule was the result of “reasoned decision-making by FinCEN”

In a response to FNF’s objections filed on Tuesday, the defendants argue that the magistrate judge “rightly concluded that FinCEN’s Residential Real Estate Reporting Rule was statutorily authorized by the Bank Secrecy Act, and that the rule was the result of “reasoned decision-making by FinCEN.” As a result of these assertions, the defendants argue that none of FNF’s objections to the magistrate judge’s conclusions should be sustained. 

“At times, the objections even misconstrue the Report — apparently deliberately — to make it seem less reasonable than it is,” the defendants wrote in their filing. “Contrary to Plaintiffs’ unsupported objections, the Report reflects a careful, thorough and correct analysis of the issues presented in the briefs and reflected in an extensive record.”

In contrast to how the report was viewed by the plaintiffs, which said that it concluded that every unmonitored financial transaction is “suspicious” under the new rule, the defendants argue that it explains how the current lack of federal monitoring of the transactions the rule applies to can be exploited by illicit actors.

Additionally, the defendants push back against FNF’s claim that FinCEN lacks the authority to impose these reporting requirements, arguing that the Congress “independently granted FinCEN authority to impose permanent reporting obligations through regulations… and temporary reporting obligations through GTOs [geographic targeting orders].” 

FNF has also been adamant that the costs of the rule outweigh its benefits, and it claimed that the report is allowing this to stand. Instead, the defendants argue that the report “merely recognizes that the [rule] did not require FinCEN to quantify the Rule’s benefits or to show that such benefits outweigh the Rule’s quantified costs, as Plaintiffs largely conceded at oral argument.”

The defendants request that the court enters an order overruling the plaintiffs’ objections and accept the magistrate judge’s report in full. 

In late September, FinCEN announced it was postponing the implementation of the policy from Dec. 1, 2025, to March 1, 2026. 

At the time, FinCEN said the decision was made to “reduce business burden and ensure effective regulation.”